Nine Puzzles: Episodes 1-6 » Dramabeans Korean drama recaps

Nine Puzzles: Episodes 1-6

by starrygazer

Nine Puzzles follows a criminal profiler and a detective as they attempt to solve a string of murders that may or may not be linked. While our criminal profiler attempts to sniff out the killer, our detective harbors lingering suspicions that our profiler may be a killer herself. With circumstance throwing them together can they work together to find out who is behind the bloodshed?

EPISODES 1-6

We first meet YOON YI-NA (Kim Da-mi) a decade before our current timeline. It’s a rainy night and she is travelling home from her high school dorm to see her uncle YOON DONG-HOON (Ji Jin-hee). A former police superintendent and station chief, Dong-hoon had taken Yi-na in and raised her after her parents died in an accident. Yi-na arrives to a dark home, the electricity flickering thanks to the storm, and as she walks inside she steps on something. It’s a hand-drawn puzzle piece showing a rabbit holding a gun. As Yi-na walks further into the house, she stops again when she realizes she’s stepped in something — it’s blood. The lights flicker on and she sees her uncle lying dead on the floor.

When our detectives arrive TAE DONG-SOO (Jung Man-shik) and his rookie KIM HAN-SAEM (Sohn Seok-gu) discover Dong-hoon was killed with an awl from Yi-na’s room. And as far as Han-saem is concerned, the awl and Yi-na’s lack of emotion make her the number one suspect. From my perspective, Yi-na appears traumatized, fixating on her blood-drenched socks and not acknowledging people or saying much.

At the police station Han-saem questions Yi-na about her whereabouts at the time of the murder. She can remember the journey clearly, right up until she finds her uncle’s body, and then she can’t remember anything. This could be a trauma response, but Han-saem is still convinced Yi-na is the culprit. But with no concrete evidence to hold her, Yi-na is released and she heads straight back home to try and trigger her memory. She even goes so far as to lie in her uncle’s chalk outline, and we see she herself is starting to doubt whether or not she killed her uncle.

Now in the present, Han-saem is still with the police and Yi-na has also joined the force as a criminal profiler. Since Dong-hoon’s death Yi-na has been seeing the same psychiatrist LEE SUNG-JOO (Park Kyu-young), Sung-joo anchors Yi-na and they seem more like friends than doctor and patient. Yi-na bounces all of her cases off Sung-joo and Sung-joo offers different perspectives to Yi-na. (I am a fan of this relationship for Yi-na.) Sung-joo warns Yi-na that as the anniversary of her uncle’s death is coming up she needs to be careful her coping mechanisms, such as excessive bungee jumping, may be getting worse. Sidenote: Yi-na does finally retrieve a memory of the night her uncle died and she tells Sung-joo, the killer was there — but left her alive.

Han-saem still thinks Yi-na is guilty and even takes Yi-na’s route home every year on the anniversary of Dong-hoon’s death trying to find a new lead, but there is never anything new. Han-saem seems to border on obsessive over Dong-hoon’s case but it’s understandable as we learn it was his first case and is the only one of his cases that remains unsolved. What I find funny is that Han-saem still suspects Yi-na even though she habitually drops by the station to ask about any progress on her uncle’s case. (Chill dude I’m pretty sure she didn’t do it.)

On the anniversary of her uncle’s murder, Yi-na arrives home and a courier hands her a package with no return address — it’s another puzzle piece showing a woman with a rope around her neck. After checking that the puzzle piece fits the one Yi-na found at her uncle’s murder scene years ago, she calls Han-saem but he doesn’t pick up. Yi-na has an uncanny ability to remember details about other people, and she knows Han-saem visits his mother on the same day every week. Yi-na rushes to his mother’s home (there really are no boundaries with her) but when his mom says Han-saem is not there, Yi-na goes to leave, empty-handed. Except, she can’t remember what level of the parking garage she left her car, so has to go searching level by level.

During her search, Yi-na finds a car parked with its engine running. Curiosity gets the better of her, and when she peeks inside there is a dead woman who has been strangled. Yi-na calls the police and then goes to the station to wait for Han-saem. This is his team’s case and Yi-na wants to show him the puzzle pieces, she is convinced that this is the work of a serial killer but Han-saem is not ready to listen to her.

The victim, LEE MI-YOUNG (Kim Ye-won), runs a whisky bar that was frequented by quite a lot of police officers. The investigation gets messy when Han-saem uncovers that the last person Mi-young called was the current police chief, and Han-saem has to question a lot of police officers that frequented the victims bar to rule them out as suspects. It leaks to the press that several high-ranking police officers frequented the muder victim’s bar and Yi-na gets dispatched to Han-saem’s team to help solve the case. As Han-saem investigates, he realizes that Yi-na isn’t Mi-young’s killer, and she is quite helpful working with his team for this case. But she’s incredibly quirky and has a blunt way of speaking that rubs people (especially Han-saem) the wrong way.

Despite his personal feelings about Yi-na, Han-saem can’t deny that she’s a great profiler. The investigation eventually leads Han-saem’s team to Mi-young’s ex-boyfriend KANG CHI-MOK (Lee Hee-jun), as a potential suspect. But that lead runs cold when Chi-mok goes missing. The assumption is that he’s gone on the run, but when the police find Chi-mok’s dismembered body in a red suitcase, it upends their assumptions.

Thanks to Yi-na’s profiling skills, and Han-saem’s growing willingness to take her insights seriously, they catch Chi-mok’s killers. The culprits? Chi-mok’s wife, SEO YANG-HEE (Ok Ja-yeon) and her boyfriend. Strangely, Yi-na receives yet another puzzle piece, even though Chi-mok wasn’t killed by whoever was responsible for her uncle’s death. What’s more, the puzzle piece has an image of a man with red lines drawn over his limbs and neck. Yi-na takes the puzzle piece to show Yang-hee, and Yang-hee confirms that the lines match up exactly with where she had dismembered her husband. She recalls that it felt spooky on the night she got rid of Chi-mok’s body, as if there was someone else there. And yup, the Puzzle Piece Killer was watching. *Chills* It would seem that the killer was targeting Chi-mok, but Yang-hee and her lover beat them to it.

The next case Han-saem and Yi-na work on together isn’t related to the Puzzle Piece Killer but it shows us the growth in their relationship. Though the case appears to be a simple suicide, their investigation makes Yi-na realize that the puzzle victims might have become targets because they committed crimes of their own.

Over drinks at Han-saem’s place, the two make their detente official. Yi-na trusts Han-saem completely after spending time profiling him and she deems him the only person she can trust. And Yi-na invites Han-saem to do the same, to profile her and decide if he can trust her. Trust will be the most important part of this case, as Yi-na has deduced that the killer is someone she knows.

With Yi-na making herself home at their new basecamp, a.k.a Han-saem’s apartment, she gets her first good night’s sleep in a decade because she feels safe. I’m both impressed and perplexed at their relationship growth; Yi-na has all but moved herself in and Han-saem is surprisingly accommodating – in stark contrast to their relationship in the beginning. Han-saem even seems to have some growing affection for Yi-na, he even gets worried for her safety as she is the only real connection to the Puzzle Piece Killer.

While going over the evidence they have collected Yi-na finds that Chi-mok called the same person three times before he died, the CEO of a construction company, and she wants to check him out. Yi-na heads down to the office of DO YOON-SOO (Lee Sung-min) and he is an extremely unpleasant person. Yi-na tries to shake Yoon-soo down for information on how he knows Chi-mok, by describing in detail how he could easily be the next victim and how she would kill him. (Yi-na is a little on the nose but I love how blunt she is regardless of who she’s speaking to.) Yi-na’s best tactics don’t work and Yoon-soo tells her to get out.

Jokes on you buddy, when Yi-na and Han-saem go to the next crime scene, the victim is none other than Yoon-soo, killed in the exact way Yi-na had described earlier. (I am so creeped out by this, it feels like the Puzzle Piece Killer is watching Yi-na at all times.) This case is being handled by Han-saem’s team and they are not very welcoming to Yi-na, even though they have worked together previously. As Yi-na and Han-saem wait for the forensics results on Yoon-soo’s murder another puzzle piece is delivered to Yi-na. This time the figure on the piece (presumably Yoon-soo) is depicted as a clown.

When a piece of evidence from Yoon-soo’s crime scene goes missing, Han-saem asks his colleague CHOI SAN (Hyun Bong-shik) to keep it quiet. You can see he is starting to doubt his team. Han-saem does confide in his captain YANG JUNG-HO (Kim Sung-kyun) about the missing evidence, but out of all of his colleagues I have the most doubts about Captain Yang and I can’t put my finger on why.

In episode 6, Han-saem begins to dig into the relationship between Chi-mok and Yoon-soo. It appears that the two disliked each other but Yoon-soo tolerated Chi-mok for some reason… But why? Yi-na digs deeper into the background depicted in the four puzzle pieces she now has. Taken together, she sees it is an amusement park. Yi-na finds the actual amusement park, but when she questions the park manager it turns out no big incidents ever occurred there. For the time being the amusement park is another dead end.

This does give Yi-na an idea though, that maybe the connection between the victims isn’t a trait or an acquaintance with each other. She discovers that the swanky apartment building Mi-young was living in was owned by Chi-mok before her, and Yoon-soo before him. Yi-na still can’t seem to find a connection to her uncle but I’m positive it is coming. She calls Han-saem to the apartment and explains the connection between the victims, and we are left waiting to find out what happens next.

This show has left me on tenterhooks, and I cannot predict what is going to happen next. (The sign of a good thriller in my eyes.) Yi-na is flawed in many ways but I find her kooky and likeable, and I enjoy the way they have shown us her thought processes. When she thinks about a crime she imagines herself as the victim, perpetrator, and sometimes a bystander. With the whole scene under a spotlight you know immediately you are witnessing her mind and how it works.

Han-saem is the typical hardworking cop, but he gives us the viewers a real sense of his empathy and his good nature. This makes him endearing – to me at least, but he balances Yi-na’s chaotic nature really well. It is very disappointing we have to wait a week for the next three episodes, but I can’t wait.

 
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